


The Adventures of Fredzilla, Time Traveler Extraordinaire

by melimarron



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Discussion of Death/Suicide, Discussion of Mental Illnesses, Fred Whump, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major character death - Freeform, Suicide, Tadashi Hamada Lives, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22503076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melimarron/pseuds/melimarron
Summary: During a mission, the Big Hero Six team discover a mysterious portal in the middle of a burning building. Fred, being the only one on the team with a fireproof costume, goes to check it out. He gets sucked in......and wakes up seven years in the past.NOTE: There are discussions of death/suicide.
Relationships: Fred | Fredzilla & Baymax (Marvel), Fred | Fredzilla & Tadashi Hamada, Fred | Fredzilla & Wasabi-No Ginger & Hiro Hamada & Tadashi Hamada & Honey Lemon & Gogo Tomago
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of Groundhog Day, I've decided to post a time-loop story.  
> This is going to be entirely Fred-centric, with very short appearances from the rest of the Big Hero Six team (and Tadashi).  
> Enjoy!

The worst part of what was happening was that it was all Fred’s fault.

Fred slammed his hands down on the comic book pile in front of him frustratedly. There wasn’t _anything_ useful in them. If things kept going the way they had, he’d have to involve the other members of Big Hero Six, and that _definitely_ wasn’t an option.

He rubbed his eyes. He’d been stuck here for… how long now? Nine loops? Ten?

He had to get back home. He had to tell them...

Fred snarled under his breath. Comic books were _useless_. Why couldn’t he have been a computer or a physics nerd? He just _had_ to be a _goddamn stupid fucking comics nerd_ instead.

* * *

At first, it had been fun. He’d woken up in his own bed, seven years younger. It had been like a new lease on life. His intelligence had seemingly jumped overnight- a fourteen year old with straight C’s suddenly having with the brain of a twenty-one year old crimefighter who certainly knew more about physics and math than his fourteen year old self, even if his math and science knowledge was limited to trying his best to understand even the basics of what his friends could do.

Of course, it had _also_ been confusing at first. Fred could all-too-clearly remember leaping out of bed, screaming, as soon as he noticed that his room looked exactly as it had when he was a teenager. He’d only freaked out more upon realizing that he was a good foot shorter than he remembered being.

Once he’d figured out what had happened, his brain froze up. _I’ve traveled back in time,_ he remembered thinking, over and over. _I’ve traveled back in time, I’ve traveled back in time, I’ve traveled back in time._

 _I can do literally_ anything _!_

He’d spent the first few days in a daze, wandering around San Fransokyo, staring at everything in sight. He went to SFIT on one of those days, just to wander around campus. While he was there, he bumped into Professor Callaghan.

Seeing _him_ had been like a bucket of icy water to the face. _Of course Callaghan’s still here! Abigail probably hasn’t even gotten stuck in an alternate dimension yet!_ That realization had quickly led to another one- _Holy shit. Tadashi’s still alive._

He’d run the entire distance from SFIT to the Lucky Cat Café. Tadashi would be thirteen right about now, so Hiro would be nine. They were probably going to be _so cute_. Had Tadashi been just as adorable at thirteen as Hiro had been- would be- when he was fourteen?

He’d barged into the Lucky Cat Café, out of breath and leaning on his knees, cursing his too-short legs and unconditioned body. “Keep- Tadashi- away- from fires,” he’d managed to pant out through his dry throat. “ _Seriously_.” Then he’d collapsed.

Fred was pretty sure that, from Cass’ point of view, having a random teenager run into her café, more or less threaten her nephew, and then proceed to fall to his knees on her floor was _not_ the start of a beautiful friendship.

As far as Fred was concerned, he didn’t care _what_ Cass thought of him as long as he could rebuild his friendship with Tadashi.

And rebuild it he had, despite its inauspicious beginning, doing his best to be the goofy comics-book loving nerd that had Fred had built his personality on the first time around. He guided Tadashi to SFIT, encouraged him whenever his Top Secret Project That Was Clearly Baymax was going poorly, and tried to instill in him a deep fear of fires that would hopefully overpower Tadashi’s natural desire to help people.

It wasn’t enough.

Fred had been hyper aware of where Tadashi was at all times on the night of the fire, convincing Wasabi, Gogo, and Honey to keep their eyes on him by running into their labs the day before the presentations and declaring that he was pretty sure _Tadashi is going to do something stupid and try to embarass Hiro after the microbot presentation, and we all love that kid, so let’s not let Tadashi do his thing, okay?_

Tadashi did his thing anyway.

Fred ran after him, Hiro just behind him, both of them screaming.

Neither one of them made it into the building before it exploded.

 _Wow,_ Fred thought in the split second before the heat hit him, _I really wish I was fireproof right now._

* * *

_In a tragic turn of events, we have confirmed that two students have died in the fire at this year’s San Francisco Institute of Technology presentation showcase. That brings the fatalities up to three people- sixty-three year old Robert Callaghan, eighteen year old Tadashi Hamada, and nineteen year old Fred Fredrickson. Mr. Hamada is believed to have been trying to save Professor Callaghan, while Mr. Fredrickson, the son of millionaire Stanley Fredrickson, is believed to have been trying to save Hamada. As always, thoughts and prayers are with the families of the deceased._

* * *

Fred woke up, fourteen years old and screaming in pain.

His screams summoned Heathcliff, wonderful man that he was. Always comes running when he hears a child screaming. Three cheers for basic human decency.

After successfully managing to convince Heathcliff that he’d had a nightmare, Fred was left alone.

 _Okay, I’m fourteen again. Did I die? Holy_ shit _, am I dead?_ That wouldn’t be good at all. What was the point of dying if he was just going to experience death again? Had he ended up in hell? That would explain his inability to save Tadashi. Or was he in some kind of Groundhog Day style time loop?

Fred ran his hands through his hair. _Okay. Fourteen. I have five years to figure out how to save Tadashi. No biggie. I can do this. I can so do this._

* * *

“So, you’re making a robot doctor, huh?” Fred leaned on the table in front of the yet-to-be-named-Baymax, staring at his familiar simple face. “Cool. Y’know, Tadashi, no offense, but I bet a fireman robot would be pretty cool, too.”

“...Huh,” Tadashi said, crossing his arms and looking at Baymax critically. “I hadn’t thought of that. I haven’t even started in on the interior yet, it’d be easy to code him into a firefighter/nurse hybrid thing. Maybe I could get Hiro to help.”

“It does look pretty cool, though,” Fred said, grinning at his friend.

This was fine.

* * *

He couldn’t do this, and nothing was fine.

“Shit!” Fred shouted, staring in horror at the terrifying Baymax-esque creature that was attacking San Fransokyo like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. “Tadashi, tell me, just how badly did you code this thing?”

“I don’t know!” Tadashi said, his eyes completely focused on the Bay-Puft Maxmallow Man. “Besides, I studied _medicine_ , Fred, not firefighting!”

“He has a point,” Honey said.

“ _I_ think this is _awesome_ ,” Hiro said.

“It is not awesome,” Wasabi said.

“Well, whatever it is, good job, Hamadas, because now we have an indestructible robot on our hands,” Gogo said through gritted teeth.

“The Bay-Puft Maxmallow Man,” Fred corrected under his breath, eyeing the Maxmallow Man as it lumbered towards them.

“At least it’s slow?” Honey said. The Maxmallow Man immediately started moving faster, causing buildings to crumble in its wake.

“I think you jinxed us,” Wasabi squeaked.

Tadashi had his head in his hands. “I destroyed a city with my sophomore start-of-year project. This is perfect. What a great thing to put on your resumé.”

“This is, like, the _coolest_ bot fight _ever_!” Hiro cheered.

A shadow passed over Fred, and he glanced up. _Oh_.

The next thing he knew, the Maxmallow Man had him in its terrifyingly oversized white grip. _Why does this stupid thing have to be so_ big _?_

“Don’t worry!” Fred shouted down to his friends. “I’m a regular Phil Conners!”

(So he’s watched _Groundhog Day_. Sue him; it was one of the more ironic movies he could watch.)

“What are you doing, you _moron_?” Gogo demanded from the ground.

Fred grinned wildly at them. “I just have to try again!”

“What are you-”

Fred wriggled out of the Maxmallow Man’s grip. “Okay, let’s go,” he said to himself, and leaped.

Time to try again.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fred keeps trying.

Fred woke up.

This time, he befriended Gogo, Tadashi, Hiro, Wasabi, and Honey Lemon as soon as he could. If he could build up their trust, maybe he could have the same friendships he once had. Maybe he could save Tadashi. Maybe he could figure out a way to _not_ destroy San Fransokyo before the fire even happened.

Three weeks before the Expo, while on a much-needed break from making microbots, Fred told them the truth, and regretted it almost immediately.

“Let me get this straight,” Gogo said. “You’re stuck in a _time loop_ , and you want our help, because we were in a _superhero team_ together three loops ago, in the “real timeline”.” She took a sip of her drink. “And Tadashi wasn’t a part of this group because _Professor Callaghan_ killed him, because Callaghan is an evil supervillain who wants to kill _Alistair Krei_ , the founder of Kreitech, all because Krei killed Callaghan’s daughter in a top-secret experiment that nobody knows about?”

Fred winced. “I could have worded that better, huh?”

“Yeah,” Wasabi and Honey said together.

“Definitely,” Tadashi said. “How’d you even _know_ Baymax’s chip was green?”

Fred put his head in his hands. “I just _told_ you-”

Hiro patted him on the arm. “Superhero suits sound pretty cool, though. Thanks for the idea.”

Fred groaned. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Nope,” everyone else at the table said in unison.

“Urgh. Well, I guess you’ll see who’s a time traveler in three weeks, when I heroically swoop in to save Tadashi from his own recklessness.”

Fred walked home alone that night, everyone else having left to go to their own homes. He preferred the silence, sometimes. It was easier than being reminded of what he’d lost.

No Big Hero Six, no Fredzilla costume, none of the three inches of height he’d gained in a final growth spurt just before he turned twenty, and to make things even worse, nobody believed him.

But he was going to save Tadashi. He _was_. He had to.

Fred started to jog across the street.

He got hit by a drunk driver three blocks away from his house.

* * *

Fred woke up, fourteen years old _again_.

“Urrrgh,” he groaned, feeling despair hit him like a sack of sand. “Ah, man. I have to keep trying, don’t I?”

This time, he took a walk to SFIT only a few hours after waking up. _Maybe, if I can stop Callaghan from needing the microbots to get revenge, I can stop him from causing the fire in the first place_.

Of course, he should have known that you _never_ reveal your plans to the enemy, even if they’re not your enemy yet.

When Fred got to Callaghan’s office, and explained to the man who he was and what he knew, he was unceremoniously kicked out and told that he could never set foot on campus again.

Maybe calling him a “black-hearted murderer” had been a little much.

Fred wandered through the next few years, looking up his old friends and engineering “chance” meetings with them. It wasn’t stalking, not really. He knew, from years of having Honey as his friend, that she went to the food court near the San Fransokyo airport every other Saturday. It wasn’t stalking if he was acting on knowledge that his friends had _told_ him, right? Right?

Okay, so it was maybe a little bit stalking.

On the night of the SFIT fire, Fred was definitely not lurking on campus with a dark hoodie and a kabuki mask, just in case. He was totally not waiting to jump on Callaghan and beat him up as soon as the man was alone. No, Fred was at home. Reading comic books and playing video games. Really. Ask Heathcliff.

And the fact that his body was later found with bullet holes in it at the site of the SFIT fire was just a coincidence.

* * *

Fred woke up.

“No,” he said flatly, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom. “No. Not again.”

By this point, he was just going through the motions. Wake up. Pretend to be fourteen. Either sleepwalk through life until he gets the chance to go to SFIT or contact his friends early. Try to save Tadashi. Inevitably fail. Die. Rinse and repeat.

Years later, it was the night of the SFIT fire, and Fred was watching Callaghan and Tadashi like a hawk. Then the Expo ended, and everyone left, bursting out into the cool night air. Aunt Cass promised free food. _Only a few more minutes…_

 _Now_.

The smell of smoke- so familiar to Fred’s nose, now that he’s gone through it so many times- rose. _Let’s do this_. He ran up to Tadashi, who was still talking to Hiro- how had they not noticed the smoke yet?- and grabbed his shoulder.

“Tadashi,” Fred said, forcing his voice to shake, like he thought he was about to witness the death of a beloved mentor. “I think Callaghan’s still in there. I’m going after him.”

“ _What_?”

Before Tadashi could move, Fred shoved him (and by extension, Hiro) to the ground and ran at top speed for SFIT. _If I get in there- if I just stay in the front of the building, make it easy for Tadashi to find me and drag me out, maybe_ …

The fire burned around him, dancing, lashing out. Fred fell to his knees just inside the entrance hall. _Okay, Tadashi, come and get me_.

His vision slipped into the darkness of unconsciousness.

* * *

Fred sat up in the hospital bed slowly, ignoring his screaming side, staring at Tadashi.

“Hey,” Tadashi said. He looked terrible, with bags under his eyes and bandages on his arms and legs.

“Are you real?” Fred asked.

Tadashi gave a close-lipped smile. “Yeah.”

“Oh my god.” Fred flopped down on the bed. “Oh my god. I… I did it. I saved you.”

Tadashi’s face twitched into a small frown. “ _I_ went in after _you_ ,” he corrected mildly. “I’d say it’s the other way around.”

“No, no, you don’t get it! This it-” Fred waved his arms around. “This is _so wonderful_! You’re alive! I’m alive! This is _amazing_! How’s everyone? How’s Hiro?”

“What?” There was something wrong with Tadashi’s eyes. There was something burning in them. Something _angry_. “Hiro’s fine.”

“Oh, I bet he’s botfighting somewhere, having the time of his life! This is _great_!”

“You and I have very different definitions of great,” Tadashi said tightly.

“No, no, don’t you see how great this is, Tadashi? We’re _alive_ , everyone’s _alive_ , Hiro’s _okay_ -”

“Not everyone’s alive,” Tadashi interrupted Fred.

“What?” Fred asked. “Oh, Callaghan, yeah. Too bad.”

“Not just Callaghan.”

Fred blinked. “What?” For the first time, he noticed Tadashi’s hands were trembling. “Tadashi, what do you mean?”

“Gogo ran in after us,” Tadashi said. “She didn’t…”

Fred felt his eyes widening. “No,” he choked out. “No, that’s not supposed to… that’s not what was supposed to happen.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have run into a _burning building,_ then, Fred.” Tadashi said harshly. In the silence that followed, Tadashi rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean-”

“No. You’re right.” Fred said stonily. “I have to try again.”

“What are you talking-”

“Help me get up. I need medication. I need to try again.”

“I don’t think you should take anything without a doctor here to supervise-”

“Okay, Tadashi, go get a _fucking_ doctor. Maybe _they_ can tell me what the _fuck_ is wrong with me when I can’t even _save_ the people I love even when I’ve had _three different tries_ at it!” Fred’s voice rose to a shout at the end of the sentence. “ _Damn_ it, Tadashi! Damn it.” He could feel tears starting to roll down his cheeks. “Why do I _always_ make friends with self-sacrificing _morons_?”

“I- um-” Tadashi looked almost as startled as when the Bay-Puft Maxmallow Man had destroyed SFIT because it had “accidentally” mistaken Callaghan for a walking, talking fire. (Fred had been proud of his decision to fiddle with the coding, all the way up until his coding attempts had resulted in a wrecked college, a Godzilla-sized Baymax, and a pissed off Callaghan with a face full of fire extinguisher foam.) “I don’t… know?”

Fred squeezed his eyes shut. _I want to go home_.

The thought surprised him. Here he was, with a million second chances at his disposal, a million different chances to keep Tadashi Hamada and his friends alive at all costs, and yet...

 _I miss my friends. My_ real _friends, the one I made without having to hide information from them or stalk them to make sure they’re okay. Honey Lemon, Wasabi, Gogo, Hiro… Tadashi, even though he’s dead. I never had to pretend to be someone I’m not to them_.

 _I want to go home_.

“Okay,” Fred said quietly. “Okay.” He rubbed his face. “Can you- can you get me, like, a drink of water, please? Just- please?”

“Fred, look at me.” Tadashi said.

“No,” Fred said mulishly. He knew he was being childish, especially considering the amount of loops he’d gone through. How many, now? Ten? Ten, yeah. He rubbed his face again. A headache was starting to form. “I just- you know what? Could you get me my comics?”

“What- you know what, yeah. Sure. I’ll be right back.” Tadashi clasped Fred’s shoulder, concern for his friend overriding his anger and grief. “Just- stay here.”

“Don’t think I could move if I tried.”

A ghost of a smile reached Tadashi’s lips. “I’ll be right back.”

* * *

 _Useless_.

Fred threw aside his comic books. A comic book nerd. That’s what he had to be. He didn’t know _anything_ about physics or geometry or whatever he had to know in order to try to get home. It wasn’t like he could involve anyone else in it; they’d just assume he was grieving or crazy. Or both.

Fred sat back in the hospital bed and groaned. Tadashi had left hours ago. The sky was dark outside. _I should probably get to sleep_.

He shoved the comics off his bed, pulled the blankets over his shoulders, and turned off the bedside lamp. He was asleep in minutes.

* * *

_To add to the last week’s tragedy, in addition to the horrifying San Francisco Institute of Technology fire, in which a student and teacher both perished, a young man has died in his hospital bed at the San Fransokyo East Emergency Medical Center. Fred Frederickson, who was injured in the SFIT fire, died when a man in a kabuki mask snuck into his room and strangled him._

_The identity of the man in the kabuki mask has not yet been discovered, but the San Fransokyo police are hunting down suspects as we speak._

_Millionaire Stanley Frederickson, the deceased Frederickson’s father, is now suing the San Fransokyo East Emergency Medical Center for negligence_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fred doesn't stop trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day!

Fred woke up.

“What the _fuck_?!”

His voice was too high-pitched.

_What the hell. What. Did I die in my sleep?_

He must have. Because Fred Frederickson was fourteen years old again.

“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ _kidding_ me, man-” Fred rolled out of bed. “I’ve got to do this all _again_? God fucking damn it.”

Okay. This time, he wouldn’t be wasting his time trying to see what his friends were doing. He’d done that before. If he played his cards right, he could still even make friends with them.

No, this time, Fred Frederickson was going to study his ass off. He was going to goddamn well figure out how to get home, even if it took him a thousand years.

Step one. Get into SFIT.

Step two. Get a lab.

Step three. Experiment until something worked.

Step four. Go home.

It seemed pretty easy, when he put it like that. Now all he had to do was convince his parents that he had suddenly become a teenage prodigy, and that they needed to send him to SFIT _right now_.

* * *

Things… didn’t exactly go according to plan. Loops passed, as Fred relieved the same life over and over. In some realities, he astonished his parents with his future knowledge, gaining even more wealth for the Frederickson family by reciting the winning lottery numbers for the next fifty years. In some, he used the knowledge to make friends with Tadashi, Honey, Wasabi, and Gogo easily, becoming the “prodigy” of their group and a weird kind of role model for Hiro. In some, he used his knowledge and the Frederickson money to reform his Fredzilla costume, but superheroing wasn’t even a tenth as satisfying and enjoyable without the rest of the team.

The one thing that all the loops had in common was that, as soon as Fred woke up for the first time, he would write down all of his research about creating portals. He’d studied the Abigail Callaghan Incident so often that he could recite it in his sleep. He’d grilled Callaghan and Krei for information about it, and had gone looking for the lab techs in the video over and over, having them repeat information to him over and over throughout the loops, until he was certain that he knew everything they knew.

Then he would start building, writing up blueprints, memorizing everything as he went. _Can’t bring reminders back in time with you, Fred,_ he told himself. _Gotta be smart about this. Gotta memorize everything, no matter how trivial._

_Okay. Okay. Let’s do this._

* * *

Fred woke up with a groan. How many loops had passed? A hundred and eighty? That sounded right-ish.

By now, everything was routine. Smile in the right places, pretend to have a great idea for a firefighting bot that he’d managed to perfect a hundred and forty-three loops ago, use it to get into SFIT, then keep working. When presenting the firefighting bot at the Expo, wear a nice suit his original self wouldn’t have been caught dead in, crack a few well-timed jokes, and show off. Being the unnervingly smart rich kid opened a lot of doors.

Thanks to his firefighting bot, the fire at SFIT wasn’t even a worry anymore, and it wasn’t like Callaghan had deliberately killed Tadashi. Sometimes, years after college, Fred would look this world’s Tadashi up to see how he was doing. As long as Tadashi and the rest of his friends were alive, Fred was perfectly happy just going through the motions until he got a real breakthrough.

Sometimes, he felt awful, so horribly lonely that his fingers tapped out one of his friends’ numbers automatically, only for them to pick up and not recognize him, or worse, to recognize him as “that weird guy who’s always in his lab”.

_I’m doing this to get home,_ Fred reminded himself when the loneliness attacked, and he ended up curled in a ball in a dark corner of his lab. _I’m doing this to go home._

In some of the loops, he did try to make friends with Tadashi, Wasabi, Gogo, and Honey Lemon, and that was nice for a while. But eventually, Fred would remember a funny running joke and tell it, only for the rest of his friends to stare at him blankly, and he’d belatedly remember that that joke belonged to a different universe’s set of friends. The loneliness would hit him like a vengeful baseball bat, then, and he’d end up isolating himself for weeks, working furiously on his portal.

He’d managed to get a few sparks, in one loop. That had been about the extent of his progress, even though he was absolutely certain that he’d made them correctly. Of course, he was also trying to calculate the same dimension that he’d originally come from, but the tiny sample of his brain matter should have programmed that in nicely.

(Baymax had nearly had a robot heart attack when Fred asked him to perform brain surgery on him, so Fred had spent a few decades figuring out how to make a robot to perform brain surgery on him, on the off chance that it could help program the portal to do what he wanted it to do.)

He took a few loops off, every so often, so he didn’t burn himself out. In those, he worked on side projects, like an improved Fredzilla costume, or an invisible sandwich. When he’d showed the invisible sandwich off to his friends, he got strange looks from all of them, and he was reminded, with a stab of pain that _really should not hurt so much, goddamnit,_ that that joke had been with his original group of friends.

Well, they would find it _hilarious_ when he got home and started eating only invisible sandwiches. Screw you, guys. Science can do _anything_.

After one attack of loneliness that led to Fred shutting down completely and having to be hospitalized because he wouldn’t respond to anyone for nineteen hours, he started making little dolls of the Big Hero Six team. They were more small crude drawings on cardboard than dolls, but they helped a lot. Well, a little. Okay, they didn’t help at all. Maybe the placebo effect would eventually take place. Fred wasn’t hopeful.

So he worked. He drew up all the diagrams that hadn’t worked in previous attempts, trying to remember the exact measurements of each portal. He wrote down every detail he could remember about his lives until he had fifty notebooks that he memorized just so he could try to remember what had happened to him.

Above everything else, he died.

He died, over and over and over, until death had practically lost its meaning to him. Spill orange juice all over delicate machinery? Time to die and try again. Explosion in the lab? Damn it, he lost his height again. Someone sees him having a loneliness attack and freaks out and tries to have him committed to a mental institution for just standing in a room screaming? Looks like that someone is going to be traumatized by Fred’s dead body. Death was the answer to everything, mostly because it was never permanent.

There was… probably something wrong with that mindset.

But it didn’t matter right now.

Right now, Fred had to work.

Right now, Fred had to get home.

Right now, Fred had to do everything he could have sworn he couldn’t do in a million years.

Fred sighed, rubbed his eyes, and picked up his pencil again. “Okay, I’m going to try that again, but I’m readjusting the angle of the sixth mirror by thirty degrees. That might do something. Who even knows. Okay. Let’s go.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all ends.

It was the two hundredth and eighth loop, and Fred was so used to failure that he didn't register that the portal was glowing until he happened to look over at it in between finishing up his calculations and looking for his invisible sandwich, which he had misplaced somewhere in his lab.

When he saw it, he stood up slowly and pulled off his safety goggles to get a better look at the shining, swirling portal. "Holy shit," Fred breathed. "It worked. Oh, my God!" He spun around and hugged the nearest Big Hero Six doll- in this case, Wasabi. "Oh, my God! It worked! It worked!"

He dropped Wasabi and ran over to his computer, a huge grin splitting his face in two in a way he hadn't smiled since the second or third loop. "This is test number eight hundred and twelve, loop two hundred and eight, and it worked! It _worked_! Like, holy shit! It, like, rattled, and I was like, _oh my God it's going to explode again_ , but it didn't! It's- I think- I- it's working. It's- it's finally working, oh my God. Take _that_ , Callaghan! It only took me like a thousand _fucking_ years! Yes! Yes! Ha!"

Fred ran his hands through his hair. Physically, right now, he was fifteen years old. As he had in the past several loops, he'd gotten to SFIT as soon as possible, astounded the teachers there with his carefully memorized speech at the presentation, and got himself an early admission.

He took a deep, shaky breath and collapsed onto his yoga ball chair. "It _worked_ ," he repeated. "I can't believe it. It's been... God. I think it's been decades since this started. Centuries, maybe? I didn't think about how long this would take."

He snapped his safety goggles back on again. "God _damn_ , I missed the team so much." He could hear his voice getting choked up. He didn't care. "I should send this to them. Several hundred hours' worth of videos, all my research and drawings. Put it in a bag and label it _To Big Hero Six, aka Gogo, Honey, Wasabi, Baymax, and Hiro, xoxo, Future Fred_."

He licked his lips. "In fact, I think I probably will do that. It's funny, I never had an actual _plan_ for if I ever succeeded. I kind of thought... well. I thought I'd have more time to think of a speech or something, but I guess I don't!"

Fred could feel a laugh bubbling up, a crazy-sounding laugh that would probably cause someone to admit him to an insane asylum, even without knowing about the whole time loop/reincarnation thing Fred had going on. He swallowed it, but a huge grin broke out on his face anyway. "I'm coming home! I'm- I get to go home! Oh, my God! I- Woo-hoo! Yes! Yes!" He jumped off of his yoga ball and jumped around the room. "I did it! I did it! _Hell_ , yes!"

He sat back down, his wild grin still on his face. "Okay. Okay. I think I _will_ send this over to the team, first. I have to, well, grow up before I go home, mainly so we don't have any awkward questions. Might as well send an explanation.

"So, guys. Hi. I'm Fred. That explosion at the lab kinda fucked me up. I've basically been stuck in a years-long Groundhog Day loop. I'll explain more when I get home. I figured I'll come back in about a month from the day I disappeared. This data stick should come out about six hours after I went in, so hopefully the fire's died down by then. I'll probably pop out at the same place. I was thinking on May nineteenth, at five-fifteen PM. Classes should be over by then, right? I'll see you there, then."

Fred flashed his best cheesy grin at the camera, then frowned. "Wait. Oh, no." _Where the hell is my sandwich? The rats are going to get to it!_

He spun away from the camera. "Where the hell did it..." He jumped to his feet, the lab coat spinning around him like a wizard's cloak. "Oh, man, I should've known this would happen! Where are you, you freaking- aha!"

Fred dove down out of sight of the camera, groped around for a while, and came up holding an invisible sandwich. "In addition to that portal, I also managed to figure out how to make my sandwiches invisible! Nice, huh?" He took a bite of his sandwich. "I'll be back in a month!" He stopped recording.

He could feel tension leaking from his shoulders as he waited for the files to upload to the data stick. As he waited, he stared at the portal as it swirled in front of him. _My calculations better be right, or I'm about to make a giant fool out of myself._

The computer beeped, signaling that the data stick was ready. Fred pulled it out of the computer, put it into a bag, and wrote _For BH6. The last one has the info you need. XOXO, Future Fred :)_ , as promised.

Then he tossed it into the portal and shut it down.

* * *

Hiro slapped the data stick down on the table. "I've checked out the math "Future Fred" said he used," he said with dramatic air quotes. "It looks like it could be real."

Gogo blew a bubble of gum. "So we're really supposed to believe that Fred- _our_ Fred, lovable dumbass that he is- managed to figure out _time travel_ and _transportation to alternate dimensions_?"

"I don't know!" Hiro said, throwing his hands into the air. "Baymax said there were tons more videos, but that it's mostly just math jargon that was already on the stick, mixed with comic book references, mixed with random angsty drunk moments!"

"Sounds like Fred," Honey said.

"He didn't look old enough to drink," Wasabi said, sounding worried.

"When has that ever stopped Fred?" Gogo asked.

"Let's yell at him about it on May nineteenth," Honey said.

"What if it really is a prank, though?" Wasabi said. "I mean, it's just... what if?"

"I have scanned "Future Fred" in my databases. He is physically fifteen years old, with symptoms of imposter syndrome and nihilism that were not there when I scanned him last. He also appears to be surviving almost entirely off of corn chips." Baymax said. "And the occasional turkey sandwich."

"That _definitely_ sounds like Fred," Honey said. "Honestly, who, besides Fred, would both know that we're Big Hero Six, _and_ use two hundred lives to make an invisible sandwich?"

"How do we even know he's telling the truth, though?" Wasabi argued. "All we know is that his math was right, he looks younger, and that he's still terrible at feeding himself even when he has access to a _mansion_. How do we know he's as old as he said he was?"

Baymax put up a finger. "According to my knowledge of Fred's behavior, he was exaggerating. It is highly unlikely that he would be able to exist for over one thousand years without going insane. However, it does appear that he was telling the truth about being older than we remember him being."

The room was silent for a moment, everyone half expecting Fred to jump in with a joke or an enthusiastic reference to comics.

"Well, I mean, what are we supposed to do?" Gogo said eventually. "Kick him off the team? Because _that_ \- we can't do that. He's our friend. Mean jokes or not."

There was another moment of silence.

"Well, I'm going," Hiro said eventually.

"Me, too." Honey said.

"Of course," Wasabi said.

"Yeah, I'll be there." Gogo said.

"All right, then," Hiro said. "May nineteenth, five-fifteen. Baymax, I guess you'll be carrying us."

"Oh, _God_." Wasabi groaned.

* * *

On May nineteenth, the five members of Big Hero Six were at the site where the portal that had swallowed Fred up had... well, swallowed Fred up.

At five-fifteen precisely, there was a flash of light, and Fred, wearing his Fredzilla suit, came tumbling out of it, a huge grin on his face and tears running down his cheeks.

* * *

There was something _different_ about the air in this version of San Fransokyo, and Fred had been to a lot of San Fransokyos. There was something lighter about it. It was easier to breathe, too.

Maybe it was because he no longer had to worry about getting home.

Maybe it was because he wasn't alone anymore- he could talk and vent and ramble about anything he wanted, and none of his friends were going to stop him to say something like _wait- since when are you a dimension traveler?_

Maybe it was because he no longer had to keep secrets.

But maybe it was a combination of all three. Maybe it was the simple joy of patrolling the streets with his _team_. Maybe it was seeing everyone, alive and unharmed.

Fred was home.

And he was going to keep it that way.


End file.
